Turn 1 Cygnar: Ran battlegroup towards the building, hunter veers towards starting army, strategy is to shoot at 14″ range and kite. 2 Half Jacks run with Hunter to create a mine field with the hopes of channeling the attackers into the kill zone.

Turn 1 Retribution: Group runs down edge of board, out of building kill zone towards mines.

Turn 2 Cygnar: Army is installed in building. Long gunners on all three floors, defender behind cover on ground floor. Hunter out in open, I think I took a shot with the hunter at an advancing ‘jack and missed. Two halfjacks turn into mines.

Turn 2 Retribution: Garyth casts ‘Gallows’ and draws my hunter into Melee and roughs him up a bit but don’t kill him. Battlegroup advances in forest between killzone and mines, but still has a forest to block line of site.

Turn 3 Cygnar: Hunter ‘thank you Parry!’ books back towards building. Siege runs towards hunter and pops his feat, repairing the significantly damaged hunter completely. Long gunners leave building (probably a mistake) to create a gun line to counter the approaching warjacks.

Turn 3 Retribution: Army advances right in front of building, maybe some attempted ranged attacks but nothing notable happens.

Turn 4 Cygnar: Defender, Hunter, & Long Gunners combined range attack work together to take out the Phoenix Heavy Warjack! Woot!

Turn 5 Retribution: No shy warcaster for Retribution. Garryth walks behind the defender, keeps all his focus, and uses most of his focus for something like 5 or 6 melee attacks (all boosted because of weapon master) and Garryth single-handedly cuts down the defender in one turn.

Turn 6 Cygnar: Panic! Instead of doing the right thing and zerging all remaining units and assassinating Garryth, Darius books out of the building afraid of the nasty 6xboosted melee attack from Garryth.  Long Gunners and Hunter attack the light jack, but the dead Phoenix provides cover, so the Hunter misses and the Long Gunners either miss or do negligible damage.

Turn 6 Retribution: Garryth runs in the building and takes out two Long Gunners with ranged attacks.

Turn 7 Cygnar: Darius tries to run in the door and smash Garryth in the face, but his fat ass won’t fit and he’s just 1/16th of an inch out of melee range standing in the doorway! I didn’t think about the larger base size interfering, doh! The hunter backs up to get out of charge range of the Retribution lights, ready to snipe them down but leaving my caster pretty much alone. The long gunners try and combined range attack Garryth, but a warcaster in cover is pretty hard to hit!

Turn 7 Retribution: Garryth comes out of the building and takes out the last of the long gunners.

Turn 8 Cygner: As Garryth is now out of cover, Darius advances into melee with him and bashes him in the face with his force hammer twice (burned through focus boosting attack and damage), leaving ONE HIT POINT on Garryth. Darius FORGETS to use his secondary weapon, a wrench!!! It probably wouldn’t have done the trick, but all I needed was one wound! argh!

Turn 8 Retribution: Garryth does his 5x weapon master instant kill on Darius. Game over!!!

Retribution

• Garryth, Blade of Retribution
• Phoenix
• Chimera
• Gorgon

Cygnar:

• Darius
• Hunter
• Defender
• Long Gunners

Thoughts:

• A warcaster that can buy additional melee attacks with weapon master seems amazing powerful and completely risky (I love WarMachine!). This increases my motivation to paint up Ashlynn D’Elyse, who might have a similar style
• I did good taking out the Phoenix… with its AOE fire damage, and its monster melee blade, it would have ruined my day
• I need to learn to better use (or not) terrain with my Long Gunners. I ran straight for the building cover regardless of opponent starting position and likely path, and this costs me at least one round of an active gun line against the advancing battlegroup. Hmmmm.
• This was a fun game! The Cryx game earlier in the night was more ‘learning about Denegrah’s venom assassination strategy’ than a full game. This game was full of surprises, both me and my opponent had to change strategies as the battle developed, and it came down to warcaster melee! interesting!

During terrain placement, the Cryx player wisely put plenty of forests smack in the middle of the board, nerfing my ‘shooty’ Cygnar list significantly.

Turns 1 & 2: I sent my long gunners running towards the opposite side of the board on the other side of the river. I was hopping to provide ‘melee proof’ covering fire from across the river with the decent 14″ range on the long gunners. Stupidly, I set up my caster on the other half of the board, so the Cryx player simply ran up the ‘far’ side of the board and completely ignored my Long Gunner screen. (duh!). My only option was to try and turn the screen into a flank, which meant two more turns of running because the second bridge (not visible in this picture) was still further down the board.

Turn 3 – Cygnar: Because I couldn’t get line of site through the forests, I couldn’t engage the advancing Cryx army yet. My Cygnar Cyclone laid down 2x AOEs with ‘dual covering fire’ and Siege laid down rough terrain by casting ‘rift’ right in front of the forest. My hope was that I’d slow them down enough to get at least one round of ranged before the Bane Thralls or Helljack arrived.

Turn 3 – Cryx: Defiler camped right out of the AOE from the cyclone, and Deneghra channeled ‘venom’ and damaged my warcaster! Since it’s a spray AOE it ignores cover.

Turn 4 – Cygnar: I opened up on the Defiler (bonejack with arc node channeling Denegra’s venom spray attack) with the Cyclone, Siege, and the Charger. While I HIT 4 out of the 5 attacks (which was decent given the +2DEF the Defiler got due to the forest), I rolled poorly and didn’t take out the Defiler. This proved to be very, very bad.

Turn 4 – Cryx: Deneghra popped her feat (nerfs most stats) and channeled another shot of Venom through the Defiler. I *think* she may have casted twice, and with decent roles, she successfully assassinated Siege! GAME OVER.

Next time:

• If I don’t get a clear killing field for my ranged army, and I’m against spray attacks, I need to take out the arc node at all cost, or not rely on cover and kite for a few turns to get the terrain on my side.
• I could have easily engaged the Defiler in melee, thus disabling it’s arc-node. That would have wasted another round of range, and there was nothing else to shoot at, so that’s not ideal.
• I would set up my caster near the river, right at the bridge, so the screen of Long Gunners could have whittled down the opposing army as they advanced.

I learned the Siege (and any warcaster) is vulnerable to Deneghra’s spray attack spell VENOM. Watch out!

Cryx:

• Deneghra
• Slayer Helljack
• Deathripper bonejack
• Defiler bonejack
• Bane Thralls Unit (6)

Cygnar:

• Siege Brisbane
• Reinholdt Gobber Speculator
• Cyclone Heavy Warjack
• Charger Light Warjack
• Long Gunners Unit (6)